


Steel Scrapes Bone, Blood Soaks Skin

by Pleasant_Boy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Human Experimentation, Knifeplay, Medical Experimentation, Medical Kink, Mild Gore, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Needles, POV First Person, Painplay, Psychological Horror, Self-Indulgent, Sexual Tension, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships, ms. o'deorain please carve me up like a christmas ham tho, y'all... it's bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-22 21:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13772589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pleasant_Boy/pseuds/Pleasant_Boy
Summary: The smiles she gave me were never truly friendly, but I'd stopped minding that at some point too. She wasn't unkind – she wasn't the one who kidnapped me, after all, even if they did it on her orders,oh, but, that does mean she was the one who did that, but–But she wasn't unkind, and I wished she would be.One of Moira's patients wants so, so much more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags - this is a horror story, not a romance. If you have a severe phobia of needles or descriptions of gore it's probably a good idea to skip this?

The doctor was nothing but the picture of professionalism during our forced appointments, and I wished more than anything that was not the case.

"How are you feeling today?" she asked, as always, that silky voice curling around my ears like an errant strand of hair, like it was part of my own body.

"Fine," I said, as always. I had stopped pretending to be unhelpful a long time ago – or at least, it felt like it had been a long time. With no windows or calendars or clocks, I didn't have any way of being certain. In this small white room, time stood still when Doctor O'Deorain wasn't visiting me.

The smiles she gave me were never truly friendly, but I'd stopped minding that at some point too. She wasn't unkind – she wasn't the one who kidnapped me, after all, even if they did it on her orders, _oh, but, that does mean she was the one who did that, but_ –

But she wasn't unkind, and I wished she would be.

She began by examining the various monitors I was hooked up to, transferring the information onto her clipboard. She liked having physical backups, she had told me when I first arrived. Digital could be so unreliable these days, especially in this line of work. I had said something like… _"I don't care, you're out of your fucking mind, please just let me go."_

What a fool I was.

Dr. O'Deorain's hands were freezing as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm. At first I'd thought her careful manicure was unusual, somehow out of character. She didn't seem like a woman who cared about that sort of thing, but her nails were always kept a little long, painted a beautiful purple ombre, running from lavender to indigo at the nail bed. Her nails were the first things I'd asked about when I gave up on fighting back.

She didn't hold my newfound docility over my head the way I'd expected. She didn't even comment on the shift in my demeanor at all. She'd only smiled gently, like she was speaking to a child, and said, "It never hurts to look nice, does it?"

Maybe I could have held out for longer if she didn't look nice?

Maybe I was always a shallow person inside, and I didn't know until she opened me up to expose it.

Those cold hands pressed up under my jawline, my pulse fluttering wildly beneath her fingertips. I used to look away, and now I only looked at her face while she touched me. Like this, she never made eye contact – she was too busy focusing on checking my lymph nodes, and if she noticed the way I leaned into our skin-on-skin contact like an affection-starved kitten, she didn't let on. Too professional for that. It was driving me crazier than the confinement.

"You're doing quite well today," Dr. O'Deorain mused, brushing a wisp of orange hair out of her forehead. "Your condition's improved significantly since you first arrived." She took a seat by my hospital bed, her long, slim legs crossed neatly. "I believe it's time to start you on the next phase of treatment. I think you're strong enough for it now."

"I don't suppose the next phase involves letting me go?" I said, and my stomach flipped over itself immediately, sick at my own words. It was a joke, it had just been a joke, what if she took me seriously? What if she let me – but she wouldn't, and it was good, because I didn't want to leave, that wasn't what I wanted, was it? Why had I asked to be let go?

But Dr. O'Deorain made a noise that passed for a chuckle, something low and light, and shook her head, and my own relief at her reaction made me feel sicker. "Oh, you and I both know that's not the case," she said. "You're going to be my patient for a long time yet."

More bloodwork. I knew the doctor had other assistants she could pass me off onto for menial tasks like this – I had even seen an omnic nurse or two when I left my room on occasion – but she always did even the small work with me herself.

When I first arrived, the sight of needles made me black out. I'd screamed and cried and tried to fight the assistants off, scratching and biting like a cornered animal as multiple people bodily held me down and extended my arm. I had always been like this with doctors, terrified of them, although generally not to a point of causing them bodily harm.

Now my pulse quickened as she rolled up my sleeve, and it wasn't... it wasn't for the reasons it should have happened.

I held still for her, even as she secured the blue latex tourniquet around my arm, wincing only a little as it snapped into place.

"You're a professional at this now," Dr. O'Deorain said mildly, swabbing the thin skin inside my elbow with an alcohol pad. I shivered, and it wasn't just because of her cold fingers. 

My body knew what was coming. The plastic covering on the chair rustled as I pressed my legs together. 

"Look at you. Barely even flinching. Just a little pinch now, there's a good girl."

And on the last two words, the needle slipped beneath my skin, finding a vein effortlessly, the pinch of the metal and the lilt of her voice blending into one strange sensation I had started to need.

I hoped she couldn't hear the way I'd involuntarily breathed out harder.

My blood filled the syringe, always darker than I remembered, coating the sides of the tempered glass, my mouth going dry and my head going dizzy as I forced myself to watch. She made that amused little noise again.

"I keep telling you, you can look away," she said, twisting off the vial and immediately labeling it, but I was barely listening, my head resting back on the chair as my mind, unbidden, filled itself with thoughts of how she might look covered in my blood.

### 

Truthfully, I'd never known exactly what Dr. O'Deorain was doing to me. Like so many other things, I had given up asking eventually. I'd figured out my main burning question soon after arriving: I'd been chosen as a test subject because of an exceptionally rare disease I've had since childhood. But if she was trying to cure it or weaponize it or possibly both, I had no clue. 

Her intentions mattered to me at one point, I'm sure.

But I just wanted her to keep going, whatever she did.

I would let her kill me if she had to. If she didn't have to. If she wanted. If it would please her. So long as she dragged it out long enough. So long as she looked at me fondly even once.

### 

As always, she was right: I was getting stronger. I still couldn't walk around for very long without breaks, but being able to leave a bed at all was something that had seemed impossible even a year ago.

Wait.

A year?

How long has it been?

Sometimes I woke up and my hair had been trimmed in my sleep.

Dr. O'Deorain let me walk outside my room, always at my side. Even if I didn't have a hopelessly weak body, there was the heavy shock collar around my neck to keep me from trying anything. Did she know it wasn't necessary? Did she know it hadn't been necessary for a long time?

I braced one hand on the wall as I took staggering steps forward, panting with the effort. Like everything else in this facility, it was cold against my touch. Although the walls were a shimmering, clean white, I felt like I stained them with every sweaty new handprint.

"Is there a garden here?" I asked, trying not to wheeze. "A courtyard. Anything like that?"

"It's quite far away," Dr. O'Deorain said, and I wondered if that was genuine remorse in her voice. "Would you like me to help you into your chair and take you? You can walk once we've arrived."

I shook my head, too fast, and stumbled, clinging to the smooth wall as though it would help me up.

The doctor gripped me tightly in her arms. "You did well," she said, her voice so close to my ear, and I felt myself go boneless as she scooped me up, off my feet, carrying me like a princess for the briefest moment before putting me back in my wheelchair. My throat tightened, almost painfully.

It was the most human touch I'd felt since I arrived, and it had been with her. That it had been over so quickly made me want to sob.

But her hands were back on the wheelchair's handles, guiding me toward my room, even though I could still feel the ghost of them on my ribs, under my knees.

### 

"I'll be honest," Dr. O'Deorain said as her assistants continued placing electrodes along my body, "this will be more difficult on your body and mind than our usual treatments. But I'm confident you can handle it."

"I'll try anything once," I replied, and she let me hear that gentle chuckle again, something she'd been doing a lot more lately. 

Her hands trailed along the bare skin of my chest, fixing the electrode pads along my ribs, across my breast, and I looked away, mortified as my nipples hardened from that small touch. 

Even though it was – again, to my utter dismay – completely professional.

I kept my gaze fixed on the floor as she checked the scalp electrodes along my head. "We'll be using these to monitor your brain and body's electrical signals while I work," she explained, moving a wisp of hair out of the way with no sign of tenderness. "You'll have to be fully conscious for this."

It was the first time she'd bothered to tell me what was going on, and I knew I was right to be terrified by that.

"It's safe?" I asked, the sudden dryness in my mouth preventing me from getting a full question out. And her silence – "Doctor? I'll be safe?"

Dr. O'Deorain smiled and stepped back, looking me over again, satisfied that everything was in place. I couldn't help pulling a little weakly at the restraints binding me to the table.

"Doctor," I begged.

Closing the distance between us, she took my face in her hands. The harsh fluorescent light haloed around her head, burning the outline of her silhouette into my eyes even as I closed them. I was lost in the unexpected gift of her touch.

"If I was convinced of the safety of all my experiments, I wouldn't have made any progress in the past," she said. My gut twisted with fear again. For once, the coolness of her hands was soothing against my overheated skin, my pulse fluttering beneath her long fingers, her nails cradling the back of my scalp. I couldn't look away.

When I had first seen her, I thought her ugly. Her face seemed designed for cruelty with its sweeping angles and sharp contours. Thin lips hiding a predator's teeth. Arched brows that made every expression condescending. There was nothing soft or approachable there, nothing about her appearance inviting thoughts of a welcoming bedside manner to find solace in.

I finally understood, gazing up at her now, the full weight of how foolish I had been. I was not wrong - her face was a cruel one. Even the light surrounding her, hitting the pale skin on those high cheekbones could not give her warmth.

But this was what made Dr. O'Deorain the most beautiful thing I would ever see. A creature so stunning I craved her cruelty.

"If the pain becomes too unbearable," she said slowly, "you can ask me to stop, and I'll see what I can do. But you'll try to hold out as long as you can for me, won't you?"

"Yes," I breathed, too lost to be embarrassed about the immediacy of my reply.

Her mouth turned up in a small smile. "That's a good girl. So helpful."

I whimpered as her hands left my face and she moved away, recognizing the sound of her pulling on medical gloves. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled by a surgical mask. "I'm going to give you something for the pain," she said, and I felt the familiar pinprick of a needle being inserted into the crook of my elbow. "I'll be asking questions throughout the procedure. Answer me as best you can."

And then, with a hint of warning, "If you can't respond, I'll assume it's too much and stop."

I nodded, cringing as whatever she'd injected me with burned its way through my veins. It was working remarkably quickly, my mind already becoming engulfed in a pleasant haziness. The harsh smell of alcohol seemed to have a physical presence in my nostrils, somehow, as though I could feel it rubbing at the back of my throat. Dr. O'Deorain dragged the swab down, down, from the hollow of my neck to beneath my ribs. I knew my nipples were getting hard again, all the cold touches covering my skin with goosebumps.

"Another pinch," she said. I looked to her hands expecting to see a needle, and was instead met with a scalpel.

It bit into my flesh, right at my collarbone, and I could _feel_ my skin tearing beneath the blade as she pulled it down my body. I cried out, more from shock than actual pain. The metal invaded me cleanly, neatly, stinging as it went.

I welcomed it splitting me open. There was pain, but it was laced with a twisted pleasure, like digging your fingers into a ripe bruise. My breath caught in my throat.

"What are you feeling?" the doctor asked, and I could see that she had taken off the glove on her left hand.

"I-it feels good," I said, unable to stop my voice from trembling. As I spoke, I recognized that my back had arched up off the operating table involuntarily, craving her knife like the touch of a lover. "How does it feel good?"

Instead of answering me, Dr. O'Deorain only nodded thoughtfully, as though what I had said pleased her. "Pay attention and tell me how this feels," she instructed, pressing her left palm flat against my bloody chest.

I saw the golden glow a moment before I felt it - in my veins, my muscles, my tender skin. I gasped at the sensation as the cut she'd made knitted itself back together. I felt hyper-aware of all my blood moving, somehow, my cheeks flushing and my heart pumping and, to my deep embarrassment, my clitoris _pulsing_. Before even tilting my head, I knew my cut had closed.

"Tell me," the doctor said.

"You healed it," I said stupidly.

To her credit, she managed not to roll her eyes. "I did," she replied, stretching the newly-healed skin between her gloved thumb and forefinger. I choked back a gasp. "Tell me what it feels like. Any sensation, even if it seems irrelevant."

My mind struggled to form the right words, and I still wasn't sure I'd succeeded. "I can f-feel my blood? My skin's so sensitive. I..." 

I trailed off, unwilling - _unable_ \- to tell her about the wet heat pooling between my legs. But she latched onto my hesitation and looked down at me with her sharp eyes. "If you can't respond," she repeated her earlier instruction - her earlier threat? - to me, "I'll assume it's too much and stop."

I shook my head, the electrode cap on my scalp jostling as I did. "No, no, it's – I –" I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to look at her as I spoke. "My – my – between my legs, it's... I-I'm," I spat the word out, humiliation stinging my cheeks just as hard as a slap, "throbbing."

I wanted some reaction from her as payment for my shame. A widening of the eyes, an embarrassed glance, maybe even a stammer. But Dr. O'Deorain's professional countenance never wavered. She only uncapped the tip of a fresh blade for her scalpel and sliced, again, deeper this time.

Threads of muscle split, a tension on my skin I didn't know existed dissipating as the doctor blessed me with a new wound. The noise I made didn't sound like a woman in pain, a moan trailing off into a shuddering whimper as she extracted the blade. It hurt, it hurt more than anything I'd ever experienced, and yet I would have given anything for it to continue, for her to slice me open throat to mons with one motion of her slender arm.

She didn't have to prompt me. I was already speaking through shivering breaths.

"You could do more," I said. "You could keep going, I can take it, I _want_ it, doctor. It hurts so much but I know you'll fix it and–"

My own wail of agonized ecstasy cut me off as that golden glow filled me again, although not as much as it had before. I felt empty, still, incomplete. The wound on my chest hadn't healed itself entirely this time.

"Thoughts? Feelings?" she asked.

"It feels amazing," I cried, "I want more of it, please, I want you to reach your hands inside and tear me open and make me whole again, play in my guts and look inside me and – and you'll be the only person who can ever see it, not even me, and I–"

Another wave of golden light. I arched up, straining against my bonds as I attempted to press my chest into her outstretched hand. "Doctor," I sobbed pitifully, clenching my thighs together as hard as I could, past caring that she could see me, that people on the other side of the operating room window could see me, that I was being _filmed_. I only cared about taking more of whatever she would give me.

"Moira." An unfamiliar voice sounded grainy and far away over the operating room intercom. It was gruff and masculine, not like any of the nurses I'd heard before. "Emergency. We need you in the command center now."

"Gabriel, as you can see, I'm exceptionally busy. Whatever you need, it–"

" _NOW_ ," the voice growled in a tone that left no room for debate.

Dr. O'Deorain – _Moira_ , I thought with dreamlike glee – sighed deeply, placing the used scalpel down and stripping off her remaining glove before turning to look at me. There was a rueful smile on her face as she ran her nails gently down the front of my chest along the healing pink skin.

"I'm afraid I need to cut this session short. I'm truly sorry. I specifically instructed that I wasn't to be disturbed for this, but..." She shook her head. "You did well today. Please rest when you get back to your room. Tell the nurses if you feel anything abnormal. I'll give you something to sleep now."

She looked down at me like she was proud, and I accepted it greedily. I knew it was likely pride in herself, that her latest experiment had worked, but I didn't care. I could pretend. "Good girl," she said softly as a needle slipped beneath my skin, and I was unconscious in moments, my last thoughts of her sharp nails on my bare skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might add more to this if literally anyone is interested? This kind of got out of hand lol... I wanted to try something different from my usual writing style and it was a fun exercise. Moira is top 5 hottest fictional characters ever made for me tbh and this is entirely a self-indulgent fantasy


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content: painplay, more weird unhealthy relationship stuff, some more needles? But mostly the painplay

The morning knock was quiet as ever, but I was already awake after a night of restless sleep punctuated by invitingly nightmarish visions. "Come in," I called, knowing she didn't need my permission.

"Good morning," Doctor O'Deorain said calmly as she held the door open for a nurse. "How are you feeling today?"

I stared, but she only examined the monitors by my bedside, copying my vitals onto her clipboard. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this nonchalance. I should have known better, obviously, but it was - did yesterday even happen?

Reflexively, I touched my sternum. There was only the not-quite-softness of the hospital gown, and no pain whatsoever.

She was still waiting for me to answer.

"Fine," I said.

"Excellent." Our familiar routine of touch began, first with her wrapping the blood pressure cuff around my arm. I'm certain I looked foolish, only staring at her face mutely as she worked. How could she be so composed?

My skin was unmarred. I kept circling back to that. It shouldn't have been possible for me to heal so completely overnight. It all felt so real - the way she took my face in her hands like a lover, the bite of her knife, the breathy whines of my own voice as I said - 

I finally averted my gaze from her as I felt my cheeks flush. No, it had certainly been a dream. There was nothing on Earth that could have made me say such things out loud. Even still, she was so close I could scarcely stand it.

"This bag's just about done - please fetch another," she said to the nurse, inclining her head toward the near-empty IV bag near my bed as she passed over her clipboard. "The dextrose-saline mix. Make a note about her fluid intake as well, thank you."

The nurse scuttled out of the room quickly, head lowered, as though relieved to be free of the doctor's presence, and the wave of infuriated envy that hit me was enough to make my heart hurt. To have such a privilege and to squander it so _carelessly_.

Dr. O'Deorain's hands moved to my jawline once more. The last shreds of my modesty demanded I make even a cursory attempt not to gawk at her, but I could see her beautiful face at the corner of my vision no matter where I focused. Everything about her was made to be looked at, from her bright hair to her towering height, both demanding your attention and shaming it all at once. 

"I must apologize again for how abruptly and… unprofessionally our last session ended."

_It had been real._

...of course it had been real. I had felt it, I had remembered it, I had been up all night thinking about it, I had played it back in my brief moments of sleep.

It had only taken moments for me to throw away my reality in favor of hers. It should have frightened me more than it did.

She continued, fingertips pressing gingerly against my skin. "I gave my colleagues very clear instructions not to interrupt me, but it was more of an emergency than I anticipated." Her eyes shifted focus, from my neck to my face, and I could only hope I didn't visibly melt beneath her gaze. For a single perfect moment, her eyes locked on mine while her fingers stroked a line beneath my chin, the slight drag of her nails making goosebumps erupt over my arms.

"I promise there will be no interruptions next time."

### 

As it turned out, "next time" was not to be for several days. "You lost quite a bit of blood," she explained, as though I had even for one moment stopped thinking about the way I'd coated her gloves. "I want to make sure you've fully recovered before we perform any more tests." 

With my illness, it felt as though I spent most of my life waiting to get better, cursing my body for not functioning the way I needed it to. I missed a lot - graduations, outings with the few friends I'd managed to keep, small things like walking to the park on a sunny day. Sickness took these moments and more from me, and I constantly looked forward, eager for a time when I could reliably do something as simple as leave my apartment on my own.

Now, I waited to get better so Moira could hurt me again.

I found myself calling her that - Moira - more and more, in my own head, although it felt like a slip-up every time I did, some sort of secret I wasn't supposed to share even with myself. The more I kept thinking it, the more I kept desperately correcting. As though she would ever know. 

Maybe she _could_ read my mind.

Far more likely was that she simply didn't need to.

### 

"Would you like to have breakfast outside today?"

My suspicion must have been clear on my face, because the doctor smiled ever-so-slightly before adding, "Yes, I do think you're almost ready for the next session, but it's not today. Have some more faith in me, would you?"

I felt my cheeks flush. "S-sorry. Yes, I'd like to eat outside, if I can," I said.

A nurse moved my IV bag to the hook on my wheelchair, and Dr. O'Deorain's grip on my bicep was firm as she helped me off the bed.

There was nothing different about this time. I knew that. Her touch wasn't inappropriate, only ever practical and necessary. She didn't stare at the bare skin of my legs as the hospital gown bunched up toward my thighs as I swung around. I felt desperate for her to look, for her to squeeze my arm just a little too hard, for something. I'd been trapped in this room alone for far too long. I needed an interaction that wasn't clinical.

I needed _her._

"I want to try walking there," I said through gritted teeth, even as dizziness already set in from the slight movement of sitting up. 

O'Deorain raised one perfectly arched eyebrow at me, but said nothing.

"Follow us with her chair, please," she said to the nurse, and then turned back to me, offering her arm like a prince from a nightmare. "Don't push yourself too hard."

I avoided her gaze as I nodded.

The facility I was being kept in had none of the sterile, false warmth hospitals tried to instill in their visitors, and I appreciated it more like that. Flawlessly clean and quiet, with no color on the walls to provide reassurance to anyone except the staff. It wasn't necessary - they weren't expecting most of their subjects to stay as long as I had.

I clung to Moira's arm with shaking hands as we walked, feeling jealous of her lab coat for being closer to her skin than I was. My legs trembled, my heart pounded, and -

"We've passed the point where we walked the other day," she said, "Excellent progress."

I would run a marathon if she would only praise me again. And so I pushed myself too hard.

"I can go further," I lied, clinging to her desperately. It was too soon to stop, hardly even a few steps. "Please."

Dr. O'Deorain sighed almost imperceptibly. "Tenacious thing," she said, and the words made me dizzy. "If you're certain."

I made it ten more agonizing steps before I fell, swaying and grabbing at the doctor's coat. It happened quickly - she adjusted us as I stumbled, cradling the back of my head with one hand, the other wrapped around my lower back as I practically sat in her lap.

"She's alright," she called back to the nurse, "just took a bit of a tumble. Could you bring her chair here for me and then bring her breakfast back to the room?"

_No._ I leaned my face against her chest, vision still swimming.

Her voice reached me over the ringing in my ears as she lowered her head to make sure she wouldn't be overheard. "I appreciate the enthusiasm, but it _is_ in my best interests to see you healthy." A pause, and then -

"You knew you were going to pass out, didn't you?"

Her lips practically brushed my ear. "If I didn't know any better, I'd almost think you wanted _this-_ " her fingernails pressed almost imperceptibly against the small of my back - "to happen." 

My tongue felt too heavy in my mouth to respond, if I could have even formed something coherent. Stupid. Stupid of me to think she couldn't see right through me, see through my skin and muscles and blood. I closed my eyes, inhaling the scent of her jacket. Sterile skin and clean fabric and a purity I could never hope to attain.

Dr. O'Deorain sighed again, shifting me in her arms as the nurse approached us from down the hall. "Well, on the plus side," she mused, smirking down at me, "you're making it quite easy for me to view our next session as a justified punishment for disobeying your doctor's orders."

I _should_ have been terrified - and by now, you and I both know I was anything but.

### 

Two days and as many antiseptic showers later and I was led back to the operating theatre like a sacrificial lamb who was far too eager to reunite with the knife. Nurses secured the table straps around my shoulders, chest - harder this time, verging on uncomfortable. I had no room to move or even wiggle, although it didn't stop me from trying to crane my neck as the doors opened.

"Is she ready?"

_Oh, yes._

Moira - she felt like Moira now, in this moment, as she leaned over me like a lover - had the sleeve of one arm rolled up, exposing skin marred with dark purple veins and a worrisome pallor. They seemed to shift and roil under her skin, caught snakes writhing in a pillowcase.

"I'm not going to mince words with you - today is going to hurt."

"And good morning to you too," I said.

The amused quirk of her lips was a victory I would gladly take. "There will be no stopping like last time. In all likelihood, you'll be well pushed beyond your pain tolerance - I'll only stop testing if your vitals are concerning," she said, and gestured toward the nurses standing by with a nod. They began attaching some strange device to her back, slipping needles and tubes into those black veins on her arm. "If everything works as planned, there shouldn't be any permanent damage."

" _If?_ " I balked, and then squinted as the lights overhead were adjusted. "Doctor... has anyone ever told you that you have a dreadful bedside manner?"

"Not for a while," Moira said quietly, sounding oddly nostalgic. The flash of emotion disappeared as quickly as it had come. "Now, it's not that I don't enjoy our bantering, but I suspect you'll be screaming quite a lot. So…" She trailed off, searching for something on the metal cart near the table and frowning as she failed to find it. "Tch. I asked for - never mind." 

She pulled a stack of gauze sheets off one of the shelves and gripped my jaw with her other hand. "Open, please."

I did, and I didn't fail to miss the satisfied look on her face at my swift obedience. "There's a good girl," she crooned, and pressed the gauze into my mouth.

The action sent shockwaves through me, an instantaneous heat from my chest to my crotch. Her fingers didn't linger there a moment longer than necessary, but my mind scrambled with possibilities of what if they _had_ \- what if I could have tasted her, felt her nails scrape the inside of my mouth, run my tongue in the space between them -

"I'm not usually so unprofessional," Moira noted as she wiped her fingers off on her coat, "although you seem to have me in a habit of saying that, don't you? Bite down on the gauze and not your own tongue." She flicked a switch on the device on her back, and the tubes stuck in her arm pulsed and glowed with a dark purple light. "Decay testing commencing. Left forearm."

I hadn't been ready.

Something was eating me alive from the inside out, all sharp, tearing teeth and scorching venom. My left arm burned, melted; screams ripped from my throat before I could even process what was happening. There was no thinking, there was no _existing_ except for the pain.

Dr. O'Deorain was speaking, or maybe it was a nurse, but my brain refused to register any of the syllables as full words. I understood now why I'd been tied so firmly, why she'd given me something to bite on - I would have fought like a wild animal. I was still trying to, desperately straining and snarling even as the mere act of tensing my muscles sent fresh waves of agony coursing up my arm.

And then, that golden light.

I choked on a sob, nauseous with relief. Tears flowed freely down the sides of my face as I oscillated between the two strongest extremes I had ever known - from my nerves being scraped out with a knife to the sublime pleasure of my flesh knitting itself together again.

"Please," I tried whimpering around the gauze in my mouth, although it only came out as an unintelligible cry. Already my mind refused to let me remember the agony, completely awash in the bliss of her glow. Her eyes met mine.

_Destroy me, break me, rebuild me in your image._

"Decay testing, round two, right shoulder."

### 

Sweat soaked my hair, my gown, and I couldn't stop trembling as Dr. O'Deorain undid the straps pinning me to the table. The aftershocks of - almost certainly unintentional - medically-induced orgasms rippled through my thighs, my chest tight and breath shallow.

The gauze was the last to go, as she reached her slender fingers into my mouth again to grab the soaked fabric. I was too far gone to feel ashamed of the way I involuntarily moaned at the sensation, hungry for more of her touch.

"You did well," Moira said, discarding the sodden gauze before reaching to touch my face. Her fingers still slick with my spit.

My gaze was hazy, unfocused. But I could see that she'd been sweating too, red hair slicked to her forehead, her own breathing labored. _Beautiful._ "D-did you -- data?" The words wouldn't come out. "Help?"

There was something like softness in her expression for a moment. "Yes. You gave me so much useful data. You've no idea how helpful this is." A small smile. "Brave creature. Rest now. You've earned it."

I could pretend, as I gave myself happily to unconsciousness, that she was disheveled from an afterglow like I was, that we'd shared something unmistakably intimate, even videotaped and analyzed. 

That this was normal, that it was good, that my pain was a gift I gave freely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not thrilled with how this chapter came out but like... better finished than perfect @_@ Sorry for the delay, also - I'm trying to write this so it could comfortably "end" on each chapter released because I honestly don't know how long it's going to be and since my writing pace is really erratic. Work obligations are eating into my fic time ;; The good news is I have most of the next chapters already written and I'm super happy with them.
> 
> Thank you for being patient and bearing with me!


	3. Chapter 3

Dreams and reality mixed together, the memories of Moira's knife and the hazy surroundings of my hospital room blending as one. The lilt of her voice and the beeps of my monitors; the cold of her touch and the warmth of my blood.

"Patient 11?"

The voice that woke me was not hers. The hollow ache of a lover leaving during the night took root behind my ribs as I tried not to let the sting show on my face.

I recognized the nurse who stepped into the room, swallowed by the gaping whiteness of the tiny space as he tried to shrink away behind his clipboard. He was one of the ones always cowering before Dr. O'Deorain. Averting his gaze when she asked him for anything. Scrambling to leave the room as soon as he was able, as though he were holding his breath in her presence. 

I didn't respond.

"Dr. O'Deorain was, um, unexpectedly called out for a mission in the field," the nurse said. "I'm stepping in to oversee your, uh, your care until she returns."

I continued to ignore him, staring at a spot on the wall I had suddenly become very interested in.

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck before he began checking my vitals. I tried not to flinch away from his touch, too warm and solid and pitying, and did not succeed.

### 

Time had stopped ever since I had first woken up inside the medical facility, but it seemed to slow down so far as to go in reverse while she was away. I was forced to confront the fact that Moira O'Deorain had become my _everything_ , whether I wanted her to be or not. There was nothing of me that didn't belong to her, in some form or another. My body was hers, to harm and to hold, and my mind was singularly focused on her - joy, fear, schedule, habit, time itself, my dreams and my waking. 

And for the first time in a while, it rightfully terrified me.

Was this all it had taken for me to accept involuntary confinement here? A few weeks - months, maybe - of a beautiful woman treating me like her special little lab rat? Had I truly been so easy to break? The kidnapping, the drugging, the experimentation, all of it forgiven because of an inane, childlike crush on the woman who'd abducted me in the first place?

I — I _knew_ what Stockholm syndrome was, and I still hesitated to chalk this up to it, even as the last sane part of me screamed that my unwillingness to do so _was in itself a symptom_. I thought myself in circles because there was nothing else for me to do. I wasn't offered the chance to walk around the facility, to go outside, nothing except for a few supervised stretches in my room with a man who treated me like porcelain.

She was curing me. She was hurting me. I craved both.

I could try to outrun my own thoughts all I wanted, but every morning that she didn't greet me, the truth of my feelings embedded themselves even deeper, like shards of glass beneath my skin: I missed her.

I needed her to come home.

### 

Hands covered my mouth, and I arched upwards into the contact before I realized something was wrong.

My bed was moving, the facility was dark, and these hands were _male_.

"Patient 11? Are you awake?"

The nurse's voice was scarcely a whisper, and my guts clenched in terror. I breathed hard through my nose, eyes wide and staring up at his face above me. Slowly, I nodded.

"I'm getting you out of here," he said.

_What?_

My heart soared, even as I started trembling. Home. I could go home. I could have a life again - one that consisted of more than needles and blank spaces and losing time and human experimentation and pain so intense it made me lose my grip on reality. Little things - the tea I kept at home that my best friend had bought me last Christmas, the blanket my grandmother knit for me, the way the morning light hit the windows in my flat—

the bed I was confined to— 

the view of a city I could never explore—

my overworked family, looking at me with pity, the same pity on the nurse's face as he looked down at me—

What life? The one where all I did was wait for visitors who could do nothing except watch me die slowly? The life where I laid there, helpless to even stop people from doting on me if I wanted to be alone?

_What life?_

Something unspeakably ugly was clawing its way out of my chest, but it was not as ugly as the pity on the nurse's face.

The satisfaction, the thrill of doing an illicit good deed, of being a hero - the disgusting high of being a self-made savior, regardless of what the princess wanted. It made me sick with contempt.

"We're coming up to the facility's exit. Pretend to be asleep for a little longer, okay? They think I'm helping transfer you elsewhere. You're almost free," he said. I nodded, and he removed his hand from over my mouth.

A scream so loud it frightened even me tore itself from my throat.

With a swiftness he hadn't anticipated, I jolted up in bed and reached for the IV stand attached to the back of the bed, the clanging of metal reverberating through the facility halls as it toppled to the ground. "HELP!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs, the terror in his eyes spurring me on, "HE'S KIDNAPPING ME! _HELP!_ "

He was still begging me to stop while the facility's hall lights turned on and several omnic guards rushed toward us. Shouts escalated over the alarms ringing, but I couldn't make out any distinct words, calming down once other members of staff held me up while I clung to them for good measure. The nurse fought against being restrained, yelling excuses while I pretended to shake against the staffer who held me.

"You're okay. You're safe. Let's get you back to your room," he said, patting the back of my head. 

I looked over his shoulder at the nurse being forced to his knees. Our eyes met, his burning with outrage, and I couldn't help the smile that crossed my face.

"You deserve each other!" he screamed as the medical staff began ushering me back to my room, his voice ringing off the white walls after me. _"You fucking deserve her!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moira O'Deorain Mindbreak Me Challenge
> 
> Short chapter but the next one will make up for it I think :^)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira's gaze was unfocused, with none of the beautiful sharpness it usually held. Whiskey defiled her sterile scent, stinging my nostrils and setting my nerves on edge. She wasn't looking at me, but through me, off to some point in a very far distance, searching for something beneath my face. 
> 
> I knew immediately that I could never give her what she wanted, but it wouldn't stop me from tearing myself open to try.

I awoke in the middle of the night to a hand on my cheek, the familiar chill I had perversely come to miss.

"Doctor...?" I murmured, blinking to clear the sleep from my eyes. At some point - in my sleep, or in the past few hazy moments? - my hand had reached up to place itself over hers. She was so close, in a way only lovers should be, cradling my face in the dark. She was back, and my heart swelled -

And yet, like the last time I'd woken during the night to someone touching my face, I knew something was wrong.

Her gaze was unfocused, with none of the beautiful sharpness it usually held. Whiskey defiled her sterile scent, stinging my nostrils and setting my nerves on edge. She wasn't looking at me, but through me, off to some point in a very far distance, searching for something beneath my face. 

I knew immediately that I could never give her what she wanted, but it wouldn't stop me from tearing myself open to try. 

There was a button on the side of my bed to call for a nurse. I had only to move my right hand to hit it. A few inches crossed, and I was certain Doctor O'Deorain would leave. This was not something I, as her patient, should have been seeing, never mind anyone else.

She would leave, and I would never see this other side of her again, and I...

I thought of the nurse, screaming as security dragged him away.

I inhaled the smell of her alcohol-soaked breath, tilting my head to the side, feeling her long nails dig a little too sharply into my cheek. "I missed you," I whispered, "Moira."

She stopped looking at whatever she had been seeing, and her attention returned to me.

"Come with me for a moment," she said. I hadn't noticed that she had adjusted my IV - the bag of fluid was gone, and her free hand held a syringe that pressed into the tubing on my hand. I watched her fingers flex with the effort of pushing down the plunger, and

 

then I was somewhere else.

In spite of how frequently I'd been sedated and moved during my time here, I still wasn't used to how disorienting it was to lose time in the blink of an eye. Had it been minutes or hours? What had been done to me while I was out?

This was a room I hadn't seen before. It reminded me of the operation theatre, but... wrong. Smaller, with less bulky equipment around the edges, and no two-way glass for anyone to watch through.

And I wasn't entirely certain, but I didn't think operating suites were supposed to have office chairs instead of tables.

My head lolled forward as much as it could, a strap against my forehead preventing my neck from tilting too far down. I could see my wrists similarly strapped down to the arms of the chair, as well as my ankles, and for a moment, I was almost offended.

After all of this, did she still think I would run?

Dr. O'Deorain sat in a chair a few feet in front of me, humming quietly to herself as she arranged a variety of tools I had never seen before on a table next to her. I gathered this was her own personal office, as there was a desk in one corner full of organized clutter, and she'd comfortably draped her lab coat over the back of the rolling chair she sat in.

"Oh, you're awake," she said pleasantly, placing a container of alcohol swabs on the table. "Apologies for putting you to sleep - it's only been a few minutes. I'm quite... private about taking patients in here."

It was difficult to get my mouth to move properly with the anesthesia still wearing off, but I tried. "I would have closed my eyes." I paused. "You could have blindfolded me."

She smiled slightly and shook her head. "No, that wouldn't do. You're a smart girl. You'd have figured out where this is regardless," she replied, her lilting speech slipping into slurring every few words. The glass of whiskey on the table had beads of condensation rolling down the sides. The sleeves on her black shirt had been rolled up just above her elbows, the top buttons unbuttoned, her purple tie hanging loose off her neck.

Staring at her clavicle as my head swam, watching her pale skin stretch and smooth over bone as she moved, I understood for the first time why the Victorians had deemed women's exposed ankles perverse.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, unable to take my eyes off of the veins in her wrists.

There was a twinge of a frown, and I instantly wished I hadn't said anything. She uncapped a scalpel - God, she wasn't even wearing gloves - and looked at me in silence for a moment before answering.

"Would you prefer it if I said this is somehow part of your treatment?" she asked.

Fear twisted itself into the base of my stomach.

And yet.

You know, and I know, where this goes.

This wasn't something I should have seen. All traces of her professionalism gone, shattered by whiskey and this bare-faced confession that she was making excuses to cut me open. Something was _wrong_ , something _had_ been wrong this entire time, and yet beneath my fear I felt _blessed_ that she would show this part of herself to me. This twitching, raw nerve of a woman, drunk and dangerous and exposed - this was _Moira_ , not Doctor O'Deorain, and I could only ever want more.

"Pretend it is," I said as I leaned my head back against the chair. It would be easier for her to look at me tomorrow.

Moira took a sip of her whiskey and then turned, reached for a small remote on her desk, and pressed a button. Music filled the room - the familiarly grainy audio quality of older recordings, in spite of the high-tech speakers fixed to the ceiling. Warm but downtempo horns and strings, the sort of music that conjured images of soldiers coming home from war or memories older couples shared of slow dances and first kisses in the golden days of their youth.

She resumed her gentle humming as she rolled her chair towards me, bringing the wheeled table with her. "I confess it wasn't just a sedative I injected you with," she said, the scalpel slicing a deft line up my hospital gown as she held the cloth taut between her fingers. I couldn't stifle my whimper as I watched the gown split from the hem up, her lines always so precise, even while slurring drunk. Moira was hunched over on her chair, leaning over my body as she cut, and turned her head to look up at me from above my thighs. Strands of her short auburn hair fell out of place across her forehead, her shirt buttons open enough that I could see she wasn't wearing a bra. "I also took the liberty of giving you the strongest painkiller I have. I suspect you'll need it."

"Oh, God," I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut only because the sight of her like that was too much.

I felt the blade continue upwards, though she was careful not to cut me - yet. The gown went slack as it fully separated in two, slipping off my shoulders and down my arms with the slightest movement, leaving me fully exposed beneath her stare once again. And this time, Moira let out a little noise when she looked at me. An appreciative sigh as she rested her pointed chin in one hand, mismatched eyes roving up and down shamelessly.

Anything that could follow would be worth this one moment.

"Such a lovely canvas," she said, as though she'd created my body herself, before tearing open an alcohol swab. Leaning over me again, she pressed the soaked pad against the hollow of my throat, the cold immediately raising goosebumps on my skin. Her fingers dragged it down, slowly and methodically - between my breasts, over my stomach, a perfect line sinking lower before stopping too soon.

And then a fresh scalpel blade followed.

True to her word, I didn't feel any pain, although that only made it more strange. The tension my skin always held relaxed as it was split, flesh and muscle eagerly parting beneath her knife to allow her access to the deepest parts of me. I tilted my head slightly with the intention of watching before Moira shot me a warning look.

"Sit still. I've been drinking, and you don't want me to make any mistakes now, do you?"

I most certainly did not.

But... she was so close. If I hadn't been strapped down, I could have wrapped my arms around her. Tall as she was, she had to hunch when she went to lean in and cut lower, and if she hadn't just told me not to move I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from trying to rest my head on her shoulder. She smelled like whiskey and rubbing alcohol and blood and all I wanted to do was lick the sweat off her neck.

There was a soft clink from the glass on the table as the ice melted and shifted.

Sitting back to examine her handiwork thus far, Moira rubbed the back of her arm across her forehead, smoothing out her red hair. Blood coated the scalpel gripped between her elegant fingers, and she placed it on the table before taking another drink of whiskey.

"You said you missed me," she said, and lifted her hand when she saw me start to open my mouth. "No, no - I'd actually prefer it if you didn't speak again until I tell you to, thank you. I'm only thinking out loud."

Her fingers traced the line she'd just cut into me, playing with the edges of my skin like she was sliding her hand under a bra. "That was all I was hoping to hear on the mission. Only that. Not... _I'm sorry_ or... anything else. Just _I miss you_."

I was rapidly realizing I had no idea what she was talking about. But I didn't have to speak, so I stayed quiet and listened.

"Foolish of me, I suppose, given I was the one who left her," Moira sighed, parting me open, the slickness of my blood somehow too audible over the music playing. "Unbearably on the nose of me to say this right now, but I wanted to know I could still get under her skin. Even hate is better than indifference. Hate means you still _care._ "

Her fingers were sinking deeper, down to the first knuckle gone inside me. "You said you missed me, but did you really have a choice? _No talking._ And you're... you have no choice but to listen to me. Is this the kind of person I am now? The only people I feel comfortable talking to anymore are hostages I'm cutting open?"

Her eyes snapped back up to mine, some of the sharpness returned to her gaze. "You could have escaped while I was gone. You came damn near close to it, too. Why did you scream?"

A pause. 

Moira's lips quirked into a little smile. "Go ahead, answer me."

"I didn't want to leave you," I blurted. My mouth felt full of sand and the nausea from the overpowering smell of my own blood was making it difficult to even think coherently, but I had to tell her. I needed to make her understand.

However, the skepticism on her face told me words weren't getting the point across.

"Stockholm syndrome," she countered. "Or a case of a patient developing feelings for her caregiver. It's not unheard of." Her hands pushed further, and I couldn't help the whimper that escaped me as I watched her fingers _siiiink_ deeper, trying to process how a human body could be so delicate.

What did she want from me? What more could I give? Desperation bubbled up in my chest, and then I understood.

Trying to steady my breathing as best I could, conscious of the sweat beading on my forehead, I looked her in the eyes again. "Go deeper."

Moira blinked in what appeared to be genuine surprise. "...pardon?"

"Please," I urged. "I want -- I want you to touch me places nobody will ever touch again, not even myself. I don't know why, but I --"

No, that wasn't entirely true, was it? I did know why.

"I want to do what you do," I whispered. "I want you to teach me how."

I'd been in hospitals for so long that, at some point, I had started to feel jealous of the doctors. 

Holding my life in their hands. Able to do whatever they deemed necessary with me in the name of making me better. Looking at me, so detached, another case study, another body to open up when I inevitably died.

What would it be like? To control someone so utterly? To know that your own judgment had saved a person's life, or that one wrong cut had taken it?

At least Moira's God complex was honest.

Bloody fingers slid along the leather straps binding my arms to the chair, but she didn't open any other restraints. Moira took my hands in hers, warm and wet, disgustingly slick. Lining our hands up at an angle, she pressed us both inside, up under my ribs. 

The painkillers didn't help for this, as numb as I was. My brain knew I should be in pain, and I cried as our hands brushed raw, twitching muscle.

"I can mold you," Moira said, her face close to mine. "I can remake you into something better than you ever were before me. Shape you in my image. Is that what you want?"

"Yes!" I wept as her fingers squeezed parts of me I couldn't identify.

Her teeth sunk into my lip before I even realized she had kissed me.

"You might not always be happy," she said, letting me taste her breath, "but you'll always be mine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if this will update again - it was a struggle getting this chapter done and I'm still not happy with it (but it's been months and I just wanted it out there), so please consider this finished for now ;; But thank you so much for reading and commenting on this weird thing I made! Every comment made my day and I was so pleasantly surprised to get so many kind and encouraging comments on something really dark. Thank you again ❤


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